268 A Modern Bee-Farm 



presently when all is quiet, out she walks, with no further 

 care from the operator. If she is wanted out soon, then 

 the end should be stopped ever so lightly, but if it is 

 desirable she shall not be out for a day or two, the open 

 end is pushed harder into the honey. Perhaps you find 



A Queen being " Balled," 



and instead of caging her fast, and perhaps only irritating 

 the bees when again liberating her, all you have to do is 

 to place her in my tubular cage, and simply press it into 

 the comb diagonally as illustrated, where there are stores, 

 so that she may quietly walk out after the bees have 

 amused themselves for a few hours clearing away the 

 broken comb, and dripping sweets. One can also 



Remove one queen and insert another 



at the same operation, without any further care, or thought 

 of failure ; and it does not much matter whether it is a 

 virgin or fertile queen to follow. With a fertile queen 

 press the cage home rather hard in this case, but with the 

 virgin much harder, so that the latter may not be out 

 until about the third day. I have practised this plan with 

 distant apiaries, leaving a virgin where I removed a fertile 

 queen, and at the next visit the then virgin would be a 

 laying queen. 



In Catching Queens 



I present a novel method of securing them without 

 pressure and with no need of touching them by the hand 

 of the operator. My tubular cage is simply placed over 

 the queen as she is found upon the comb, and in a few 

 seconds at latest she is running up the tube, which is 

 lifted and at once stopped with the finger. 



The illustration of the hand shows how I frequently 

 carry queens round to the hives (Fig. oio) ; for whether 



